Saturday, December 8, 2007

Auroville

Auroville is an international town created in 1968 in Tamil Nadu southern India. Its philosophy as a place for people from all nationalities and with no religion as its base came from "The Mother" a french woman who work ed together with Sri Aurobindo, an Indian nationalist, scholar, poet, mystic, evolutionary philosopher, yogi and guru. The city has its geographical center an amazing banyan tree and the Matrimandir (pictures below), the weird golden structure .Auroville has may beautiful little corners, nice houses and gardens, interesting farms, many cultural events and yet I cant help but feel that its a bubble where the real India and the Indians are either set aside (sometimes by really big fences) or are simply the people who do the hard labour around. This is of course a generalization but it is also an often heard critique of the place. It is definetely worth a visit and the more time you spend the more corners and nice people you get to know.I have spent about 3 weeks in Auroville, 2 of which I spent volunteering at Sadhana Forest, a project that aims to reforest 70 acres of land that a few years a go was completely barren. So I planted trees, worked at the vegetable garden, bathed in mud, lived in a thatched roof hut and ate vegan food.

This is Sadhana Forest

This is Sat Prem's (an Indian architect) machine for making mud bricks (with 5% cement) it's simple and effieicient, and they're making all kinds of bricks, including these ones, who work like lego so you dont need to apply a cement mix between them and ou could undo the building and take it somewhere else.

During this time I also managed to go see a tamil movie (3 hours, extremely loud volume, claping and whistling in the theather), here you can see Vijay, the local star and next to him one of his fan clubs members. I also went to a first menstruation ceremony, basically the parents throw a big party (with loads of yummy south indian food served on a banana leaf, I love that) to let everyone know that their little girl is now a woman, that she is nw a full member of the community and that suitable candidates can start setting their eyes on her for a future marriage.